100s if not 1000s of products and an e-com experience that is still stuck in the 2010’s – that blows. It is simply doing consumers a disservice considering all the available technology and knowledge we have at our fingertips.
The modern consumer expects transparency on ingredients, proper clinical testing, consistent and realistic claims, and an increasingly higher degree of personalization, both of product offerings and the purchase experience.
Skincare e-com is not delivering on this. As an example here is how sephora.com looked like late November 2014
You have basic navigation across categories, with sub-categories within each menu. Basic search and a series of highlighted products bundled into editors’ pick, new arrivals etc. This is the functionality you get to “browse” through the many many product offerings.
Here is Sephora late November 2024 – a decade later than the first image.
It is basically the same! Same categories, simple search functions, and selections of what is “chosen” and new. Does that represent a decade of innovation? Or is e-com a race to the bottom in making all experiences so similar that consumers can quickly transact without realizing if they are on sephora, ulta or some 3rd site? All fuelled by loyalty programs, point systems and sponsored reviews?
I believe we should aim higher. Skincare consumers invest of lot of time and effort (and money) in finding the right products, optimizing their regimens, researching ingredients and educating themselves. E-com done right should support this. Empower consumers, create trust and transparency, and aid in finding the right product faster. Even when that means less revenue due to a decrease in the consumers graveyard of products that didn’t live up to expectations.
Better e-com tools
Here are a few takes on what could make for such a better experience. This is not rocket science, and it is not something that demands huge investments. These are experiences we have built 2 people within a few months on a shoestring budget.
The ingredient list is the core of a skincare product, and consumers are still just left with the full list and singular callouts of marketing relevant ingredients. This means consumers have to look up ingredients across other resources like incidecoder. An ingredient database with more than 3M visitors per month, questions on ingredients across reddit, magazines and general increases in google searches for ingredient knowledge.
What happens if we just supply all relevant ingredient information up front?
Based on supplier information, public scientific literature, the Cosing database etc. we have a wealth of knowledge on what each specific cosmetic ingredient is doing – if it is hydrating, combats melanin production or increases melanin synthesis. Hence your ingredient list could look like this:
Here ingredients are ordered by their specific skin benefit, and links out to short description of the ingredient, its key benefits, how to use it and when to use it.
Once you know what each ingredient is doing, you can estimate what the likely skincare benefit is of the entire product. Creating a fast visual representation of the product, that is comparable across different brands and products. Much more so than a marketing statement of “A lightweight, bi-phase serum that quickly hydrates and visibly plumps skin while helping to leave it calmer, visibly brighter, and more even-looking over time”
Here is our representation of such a skincare benefit visualization. Showing how the product is performing across 6 skin concern areas, with higher scores meaning more ingredients are helping alleviate that concern.
Once you have a unified way of “codifying” skincare benefits across products, you can turn this into a search function. Instead of searching by name, brand etc. you can now search by benefit profile. You can go even further and create your own skin concern profile. Now your personalized profile can be used to rank and search for products that are uniquely suited for your skin.
Instead of trying to decipher if hydrating, plumping and brighter skin for product A is better than moisture retaining, firming and tone correcting for product B? you get a simple match score representing the overlap between your concerns and what benefits the product brings at an ingredient level.
This give consumers a much more intuitive way to understand and compare products, that is identical across products. You can now search by function – which makes total sense since you are looking for a functional product that will promote your skin health.
We can take this even further. Today the claims you get for a skincare product is determined solely be the company producing it. And there is a race to produce more and more outrageous claims. But it turns out you can actually make pretty good approximations of what realistic benefits of a product is directly from the ingredient composition. It could look a little like this:
This text is generated by an AI based on the ingredient composition and deep knowledge about each specific ingredient. That means it is “objective”. It will generate similar claims for similar ingredients, meaning you take out all the marketing language and a left with what can be viewed as a candid description.
Just incorporating the ideas above would give you an entirely new e-com experience. One where you search by function, you get completely transparent information about skincare formulations at the ingredient level, and all marketing bullshit has been removed from the description of the products.
In full disclosure, all of the tools are available on myrevea.com that I am a founder of, and I have built them. So I am biased.